Oh Doctor

Thomas Beckwith
is a staff writer for The Millions and an MFA candidate at Johns Hopkins. Prior to coming to Baltimore, he studied literature and worked in IT while living in Dublin, Ireland. You can find him on Twitter at @tdbeckwith.

Recommended Reading: OnWalter Benjamin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. “They have many things in common, but where they connect most strikingly is in their shared suspicion of theory and their emphasis on the visual.”

"Literature offers a way of framing, or reckoning with, the chaos of a universe we can never truly know." The LA TimesinterviewedDenis Johnson about his new novel The Laughing Monsters, an excerpt of which can be read online here.

Somehow we knew that Gary Shteyngart had a pretty interesting childhood. As Andy Borowitzexplains in a review of Little Failure, the author’s new memoir, the elder Shteyngart regaled his son with “outlandish” stories, most notably “a sci-fi saga about a Jewish planet under constant attack by volleys of pork.” You can learn what the author likes to read today in his Year in Reading piece.

The summer issue of Prairie Schooner has a short story of mine in it, as well as other good stuff, for most of which a subscription is required. You don't need one, however, to read this short interview (very much in keeping with the Where We Write theme).